Boisie's Best

The Idaho Statesman covers the opening of the Washington state Lightcatcher museum which features a show drawn from the collection of Boise residents:

The Lightcatcher museum’s presentation of “Out of Bounds: Art from the Collection of Driek and Michael Zirinsky” is the first time the Boise couple’s art has been shown as a collection, Driek Zirinsky said. Zirinsky and her husband, Michael, started collecting art casually when they were graduate students living in Paris.

“We would spend a month’s rent, about $100, on a piece of art,” Driek said.

The couple moved to Boise in 1973 when Michael became a history professor at Boise State. Driek later became an English professor at BSU. The first local piece they bought was by then-Boise artist David Airhart. She paid $200 for the work. Then, in the 1990s, Driek began collecting more seriously, she said.

“I never thought I would end up at this level with this collection,” she said. “I made the decision to collect with the idea to support the (Boise art) museum.”

Several of the couple’s pieces have been gifted to the Boise museum. “We don’t have any kids, so this is our thing.”